Smokes and Movies
by Fallen Ark Angel
Summary: On an icy night int he dead of winter, two people find interest in only one another. And there's nothing wrong with that. - One-shot.


In the smoke filled living room, there was only one thing that kept the interests of the pair seated in the middle of it. It appeared, however, that each was interested in a different thing.

Lisanna was very entranced by the lacrima that laid before them, lying on her stomach with a pillow clutched beneath her as her eyes followed the movie that played out before her eyes. It was a classic caper, open and shut case, and it didn't help much that she'd seen it many times before. But it made no difference to the white haired woman as she mewled like a child in excitement over the SE-Plugged bikes that were currently chasing one another down in the busy streets. It was a shitty film and it was obvious, so obvious, that the hero, the police rook with hardly any cases under his belt, was going to run out of magic just as the crook, who didn't run out of magic, flew off a hard turn and landed in the river below the bridge they'd been approaching, where he'd float right down to the other awaiting officers.

But that didn't make it any less thrilling.

Bickslow, on the other hand, was very busy making the place so smokey as it was too cold to open the window, as the freezing rain that was coming down would only get in, and you couldn't have that because then Lisanna would get too cold and complain and just head home, back to her place, where they had things like a fire place, and a heater, and didn't have the risk of freezing to death in their sleep.

Ha!

Ha!

What's life without a chance of impending doom? Eh? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Bickslow also didn't like the dumb movie that Lisanna had on. At all. It was boring, they'd seen it before, and more importantly, it had captivated her attention in a way he was currently unable. That alone made it an enemy.

It was, after all, the biggest key to their relationship.

Whereas everyone else saw him as annoying or creepy or weird and any combination of the three, Lisanna seemed to find his antics, well, fun. She didn't think that it was annoying that he had little dolls following him around. And they were certainly not creepy or weird to her. She saw them for what they were. People who were no longer fully in the world, but enough so that someone had to look out for them. To keep them from truly being lost. She saw that he wasn't some sort of sick freak that took advantage of a situation and found himself friends through the only people that couldn't run away. Well, actually, yeah, maybe that was part of it, but she also knew that he truly cared for the dolls and they they cared for him right back.

Why that had occurred was rather irrelevant.

What mattered was that he'd found them, they needed someone like him, and everything else just didn't matter. Lisanna found the relationship cute and, even when it became obvious to her that it was more of a necessity than an enjoyment, it never occurred to her that it was a problem. How could it ever be? Not everyone had some lofty thing that kept them grounded. Sometimes it was something as simple and stupid wooden dolls that entrapped souls of the previously lost.

His social awkwardness, lack of awareness, and the strange behavior caused her little pause either. When Lisanna was a young kid, she didn't have a lot of friends. She had her siblings, who were odd in their own right, and anything else she could make into a playmate. From animals, to trees, to whatever other person passed through their tiny town on their way to literally anywhere else. She saw Bickslow as no different. He was odd, fine, and had some different habits, but that didn't make him an inherently bad person to be around. At all. There was something...charming in the uncanny timing of his. And, if his jokes were made by someone with some self-awareness and, perhaps, a bit more attractive, she doubted anyone would necessarily find them to be too distasteful. Bickslow just had a lot working against him, was all.

And she felt that. On a deep level. While he felt like an outcast in general, she typically found herself to be a bit different from her siblings. Mirajane, obvious, was the most beautiful and the strongest and Elfman was the most annoying and obnoxious and Lisanna was kind of just the younger one. The one who beat death. The weakest, maybe, even, considering Mirajane was so high up and Elfman was so strong now and sometimes it just gets to her, maybe, a little bit, and it's not like she'd rather not be there, because she was beyond thankful that she got to come back, but at the same time she just felt kind of out of place, you know? And it didn't matter how many times everyone told her this wasn't the case or that she was definitely in the right place and how could she even feel this way, because that didn't get to the heart of the problem, if anything that just ignored the problem and made her try to bury it deeper, but she didn't want to bury it deeper.

She wanted someone to understand that feeling.

And boy did Bickslow.

Because they were just alike, he told her, that time when they somehow found themselves hanging out and that wasn't too weird, on it's own, right? She liked the Thunder Legion. Well, not really Ever, all the time, but Freed was nice. And Bickslow was a part of the deal, when it came to Freed, for the most part it seemed, but Freed was a very busy mage and Bickslow not so much and it just worked out that way, eventually, that the two of them were alone together and Bickslow just made so much sense when he spoke.

Was that mind control?

She had to wonder.

But his words seemed so smooth and easy. The way he told her that he was alone too, in the guild. Freed was very personable, you see, so he could make friends as easily as he so choose, and Evergreen, well, she was just a bitch and didn't want any anyways, really, so she liked where she was in regards to the others, but him? The nicest guy around if people just gave him a chance? He felt alone too. Ever was always telling him to just be normal and Freed sighed a lot and shook his head at the things that Bickslow did, but didn't they know that he couldn't help it? How could they not tell that he couldn't help it?

Not too far off from her, Bickslow figured. Eh, Lisanna? No one else had experienced what she had. A handful of them understood the complexity of Edolas, as they'd been able to truly experience it, but the rest of them? How could they understand anything she said? Or thought? Or felt? They had no idea. And then to think that she was just like the other two Strauss siblings, that she was anything like what she'd been when she left, it was all lunacy. He liked that word a lot. Lunacy. And it was correct for the situation, he felt. She was clearly a different person.

Well, actually, being a bit older than her, he didn't hang around too much before she disappeared off to Edolas, but now he saw her as cool and interesting and as someone he wanted to hang out with, so that had to mean that she changed, right? Or had he changed?

He didn't want to believe the latter so he insisted the former.

It was really that easy for the seith, too, it seemed. If he thought it and believed it, then it was right and no one could say otherwise. Lisanna, though rather opinionated about things herself, rarely found herself crossing this line simply because their thinking fell in line with one another's. And when it didn't, that was alright too because she typically saw whatever it was they were disagreeing on as a silly issue, as most of his were, while Bickslow saw Lisanna as a pretty decent person, although outcast, like him, and that meant that they'd butt heads occasionally, him being a dark soul and all.

And besides, he'd finished that first night, when he explained to her just how alike they were, he was an expert on souls, wasn't he? Huh? Lisanna? And what had happened to hers then? It had transitioned planes. How could he not be friends would someone like that? When they had done something so aligned with his own interests?

It was a stretch, of course, but all enough to get her to hang around him a bit more and eventually, fine, Freed was more personable, but she didn't find Bickslow any less entertaining. Once he got the whole creeper comedy schtick out of his system, he actually had a lot more going on than most people ever found out. He enjoyed things other than just hanging around making people uncomfortable, obviously, so that actually made plenty of sense.

He liked wondering around places, new place in particular, but familiar was great too, and just finding things to do from there. They enjoyed taking long train rides into other cities, where they had no idea what there was to greet them. It was always something different. Because every city was different.

She found that Bickslow mostly just wanted to have fun and keep whoever was around him entertained. He seemed find that to be his main function in any group. He was the jester for whoever so chose to view him as such. It fell flat a lot, however, because not everyone did view him in such a way.

She suggested once that it was the sallet that threw people off and perhaps he should try a jester's hat instead, but this was shot down vehemently by the man and, well, she tried.

But that didn't mean that the pair couldn't just chill out sometimes too. They liked that a lot, actually. Bickslow didn't have a lot of people that wouldn't scold him on the different things he liked to roll up and chill out with and Lisanna rarely found someone in Fairy Tail who wasn't constantly on the move, doing this or that. To have one another to just relax with was…

Well, relaxing, for one thing, but a lot of other things as well.

When up around the guild or palling around cities, it was easy to be friendly towards one another when you're in the same guild. Though interests might differ for some, the commonality of Fairy Tail was usually enough for most everyone. At home though, away from what bound them all together, well, to still be close in that situation is really what made a friendship. And to do so willingly, many times, well, you couldn't get much closer than that.

Or realer than that.

The first time Bickslow took his sallet off and tugged down his hood, Lisanna realized just how close they were getting. It wasn't the only time he took it off, after all, considering he did so many times in battle when he felt his eye magic necessary, but he seemed to like the facade and veneer that it provided when dealing with others.

He didn't need it with her then. Not anymore. The second they crossed the barrier of his front door, he would take his visor right off and tug his hood down so that they could have conversations face to face.

Or have no conversations at all.

Like they were at the moment.

Just hanging around one another was just as good as having deep and meaningful conversations. If anything, they both had a place in any sort of relationship. If all you ever did was handle the heavy topics with one another, then it got hard to just be silly and cut loose a bit. If, on the other hand, all you did was cut loos and never had a real conversation, substance was lost and hard to track down once more.

Then there was the concept of being around one another without having to truly interact.

They'd mastered that pretty well.

Lisanna was still all cooped up over at the Strauss household and that meant that she wanted to get away from that at times. Though she frequently found that to be an excuse to hang around with her friends, there was something about Bickslow's apartment that she preferred. She was a different person, honestly, when she was with anyone other than him. Natsu, Lucy, Mira, Levy. She was bubbly and helpful and up for anything.

When she was with Bickslow though, who was naturally drawn to darkness, she felt less constricted to this line of thinking. She had to imagine too that the others had similar escapes that she just didn't hear or know about. Her sister certainly did. For her to find hers with Bickslow didn't mean much, she figured.

Other than the to the two of them.

If he let his mask down with her, then she did the same way with him. She told him things that she'd be too embarrassed to the let the others know, about her hurt and poor feelings that she had at times, over the whole situation of her return. And Bickslow, who had no real bearing on her personality before she disappeared, was more than willing to accept the new one that she had with him. It was the one that made him decide he was so safe to show his true self to her.

There were a lot of things wrong in the world and there for a good number of them could fall on most relationships and they were no different, but at the end of the day, the good outweighed the bad.

After all, when your perfect day was spent dicking around an apartment, it was rather hard to have a true falling out.

"Is it over, finally?" Bickslow asked as, in large letters, THE END flashed across the movie lacrima projection. "Lissy?"

"Yeah, but..."

"But," he sighed as she was already shoving up, "we should probably watch another one, huh?"

"Well, you're just sitting around smoking anyways."

"I'm watchin' the movie."

"You are not."

Was it that obvious?

Instead of going to switch what was in the lacrima though, Lisanna came over to where he was stretched out with his dolls littering his chest, and fell back down to the filthy carpet that she probably would have been better off touching as she would the sun. At least the sun would have been cleaner.

"Oi, kid, we gotta figure something out about all this ice, ya know," he told her as she only cuddled up to his chest. Glancing down at her, he said, "It'll get too cold here, probably, the later into the night we get. For you, at least."

Making a face, she only his his disdain in his side before saying, "I'm fine. I think I would know that, you know? You're not tougher than me."

"Maybe not," he agreed though, internally, he disagreed vehemently. "But don't come whining to me when you're frozen solid and all."

"I think I'll weather the storm, thanks."

"I's alright, I guess," he told her with a bit of a shrug. "I'd just burn down the building then, the entire thing, to try and unfreeze ya."

"And probably be jailed for arson."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"What?"

"What?"

And they both lifted their heads a bit, to stare at one another, but Lisanna only made a face while Bickslow stuck his tongue out at her and, in the moment, everything was peaceful.

Then it was Bickslow's turn to jump up and, heading over to the movie lacrima, he said, "My choice now."

"Oh." Lisanna only crawled over to where a magazine sat and prepared to read it. "Is it?"

And in the now less smokey living room, two people found interest in a singular thing, as Lisanna flicked through her magazine and Bickslow laughed without humor at the gags of the old timey comedy. It wasn't different for each of them, however, and it was much more clear then.

Because they both were only interested in one another.'

Everything else was just a function of that.

"Is it finally over? Bicks?"

"Yeah. But-"

"But you think we should watch another one."

"Don't you?'

Always.

Always.


End file.
